Fast quantitative phase imaging based on Kramers-Kronig relations in space domain

Abstract

A fast quantitative phase imaging technology based on space-domain Kramers-Kronig relations is proposed. By incorporating Kramers-Kronig relations, we acquire distributions on phase via measurements of intensity over the captured spectrum. Only using four low-resolution images, we built a microscope prototype with a half-pitch resolution of 625 nm (final effective imaging performance of 0.5 NA) and a field of view of 3.8 mm2 at a wavelength of 625 nm via a 10×/0.25 NA objective. Correspondingly, the data recording time is 0.16 s, and the space-bandwidth-time product is 243.3 megapixels per second. It is worth noting that the proposed scheme requires neither mechanical scanning nor extra illumination like interferometry. Meanwhile, the reconstruction is non-iterative and object-independent. Our method provides a high-efficiency phase retrieval framework and is promising in biomedicine and dynamic observation.